10% of prisoners declined to take COVID-19 shot in Jamaica
Despite the Government making the Oxford AstraZeneca COVID-19 jab available, some 10 per cent of the prison population has so far declined the offer to take the shot.
There are approximately 3,000 inmates spread across the country’s penal institutions, and according to Samuda, the goal of the ministry and the correctional services is to get 70 per cent of that number vaccinated against COVID-19, with a heavy focus on inmates who are bedridden, aged, and those with comorbidities.
The disclosure was made yesterday by Senator Matthew Samuda, minister without portfolio in the Ministry of National Security, responsible for the correctional services. He toured the offices of the western regional headquarters of the Private Security Regulations Authority in Montego Bay St James.
“I don’t have exact numbers now, but I would ‘guesstimate’ it’s in the range of about 300, which is about 10 per cent of our population, which is not where we want to be,” Samuda told reporters.
“I’m not happy with it, but the first target is to ensure that the public knows and that those who are vulnerable had it made available to them,” he said. “We can’t force anyone to take it, but we made it available. We haven’t gotten the number and uptake that we would like because the vaccine hesitancy is even more increased in our correctional facilities. It’s something we are going to have to overcome.”
Reasons given by prisoners for turning down the vaccine included a lack of information about its effect and general distrust of authority. The refusal rate among prisoners from a black and minority ethnic (BAME) background was twice as high as among prisoners generally.
Two inmates and three correctional officers have died from COVID-19 since the island recorded its first case last March.
Several facilities also reported outbreaks.
Samuda said that the ban on visits to penal facilities, which is imposed to limit the prisoners’ contact with outside parties to reduce the risk of transmission, is a major obstacle to the psychosocial well-being of inmates.
The refusal rate is set to be twice as high in jails as in the general community, where polls have suggested fewer than one in 10 will refuse the jab.
There was also a strong link to age. The younger the prisoner, the more likely it was that they would decline the vaccine.
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